First-time dad sees trip through son's eyes

July 24, 2010|By First Time Dad | Mark St. John Erickson

My little boy, Owen, is a veteran traveler. He made several trips to see relatives in Florida and Canada during the past year.

But nothing in these modest jaunts to English-speaking climes prepared our nearly 2-year-old son — or us — for his latest journey, which took us all the way to the old town in Colombia, South America, where his mom grew up.

Restless and rambunctious after the 2 1/2-hour flight from Fort Lauderdale, Owen started out a little awkwardly, rousing the ire of a humorless immigration official by racing back and forth across the serpentine line in the Barranquilla airport. He looked a bit sheepish when he passed a friendly Labrador retriever patrolling the halls with the anti-narcotics squad, too.

But when we finally piled into a tiny cab and hit the night streets of this bustling coastal city, Owen piped up immediately, pointing and bellowing at the chaotic, constantly changing stream of cars, trucks and buses. Then there were the crisscrossing motorcycles, pedicabs and carts powered by lumbering burros.

All that movement and light — mixed with the sounds of revving engines and beeping horns — was like nothing he'd ever encountered. But it was just the first new and exciting thing that made him jump up and make a report to me, his mom and his two grandmas.

Waking up in a 12th-floor waterfront condo, Owen stood wide-eyed as he looked out over the panoramic view of a half-moon Caribbean beach flanked on each side by the last reaches of the world's highest coastal mountain range — the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. Then he spotted the traditional cocoonlike hammock hanging on the verandah, prompting a death-defying leap that made us all shriek but ended up with our laughing little boy plopped down safely in the middle of the brightly striped fabric.

A few hours later, Owen and I made it down to the palm-shaded beach, where the open-air cafes and adjacent street were choked with crowds watching the World Cup soccer match between Argentina and Germany. No fans of their Latin brethren, the giddy Colombians cheered wildly as the Germans scored four unanswered goals, then celebrated the defeat of the hated Argentines with a jubilant dance that had Owen throwing up his hands and yelling with World Cup fever.

Our first excursion was to Cartagena, the ancient walled city from which the Spanish gold fleet sailed, spurring attack after attack from Englishmen esteemed as heroes back home but regarded here as pirates. Racing across the shoreline ramparts that repulsed Drake and Morgan, Owen shook the iron gates of the old watch towers and clambered up the barrels of long-silent cannon. He also sparked more than one stare from passersby not used to seeing such dark blue eyes, yellow hair and fair skin.

In the coastal village of Taganga, where the fishermen still paddle out in large wooden canoes, Owen even attracted a trio of little native girls, who cooed as they petted his hair and declared him "Muy bonito!" Later, on our way to a remote, densely forested mountain region known by the Indians as "The Heart of the World," he prompted similar smiles from the soldiers manning a highway outpost. But whereas all their talk was about Owen's future prowess with Latin women, what he cared about most were the exotic flowers, the spectacular butterflies and digging in the gold-flecked sand as we swam in the sacred waters of the clear, cold-running Minca River.

Owen made even a bigger splash when he arrived at South America's first cathedral to be christened. Dressed in a traditional white cotton guayabera shirt and matching pants, he was a tiny vision as he stepped through the ancient doors and stood before the towering statue of the conquistador who founded Santa Marta — the continent's first Spanish town — in 1525.

But as he smiled back at the surrounding crowd of relatives and friends, what grabbed him most were not the beaming, white-garbed ladies but rather their elegantly fluttering fans.

So beguiling was the sight that he completely ignored his later splash of holy water.